Five organs donated of reservist left braindead after tank overturned

Thirty-three-year-old St.-Sgt.-Maj. Rabbi Na’aran Eshhar and his family were well-known to the staff of the Israel National Transplant Center. Married and the father of two, he donated a kidney last June to a person he didn’t know. He was the third kidney donor in the extended Eshhar family.

He had wanted to donate a kidney before that, but he knew that it would lower his military profile and prevent him from being called into the reserves, but then he finally did. He forgot that he donated a kidney and went to war. His wife, Tzuf, asked him to tell doctors at the Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva that he had donated, but he proved to them that he was qualified, and he was given permission to go to the battlefield.

Throughout the war, he talked with his wife and children (three and six years old), and they were so happy to hear him. 

Last week, Eshhar was mortally injured when his tank overturned along with sergeant-major (res.) Yinon Fleishman, who was the son-in-law of the head of Jerusalem’s Himmelfarb Yeshiva High School, Rabbi Jeremy Stavisky. The two reservists had been doing operational activity on the northern border. 

Difficult choices made

Last week, Eshhar was mortally wounded when his tank overturned along with Sgt.-Maj.-major (res.) Yinon Fleishman, who was the son-in-law of the head of Jerusalem’s Himmelfarb Yeshiva High School, Rabbi Jeremy Stavisky. The two reservists had been doing operational activity on the northern border.

For a week, Eshhar fought for his life at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, but after he was declared lower-brain dead, his family in Shadmot Mehola – a National-Religious cooperative moshav in the Beit She’an Valley – consulted Israel Transplant to donate his organs. “After the severe injury, when we realized that it was lower-brain death, the topic of organ donation was not a question at all. It was clear, this was his will. We were just waiting to hear that it would be possible to save people.”

Tzuf recalled: “I met Na’aran eight years ago. From the second meeting, I knew that if he agreed, I would want to marry him. I was blessed with a husband who is full of grace, who is a conduit for doing good in the world and for the people of Israel.”

On Sunday, five of his organs were transplanted, saving four lives:

A heart to a 59-year-old man at Sheba Medical Center; two lungs to a 72-year-old man at Sheba; his liver to a 67-year-old man at Sourasky Medical Center; and a kidney to a 43-year-old man also at Sourasky.